There are gifts that are received in childhood and that mark the rest of life. It is likely that the giver knows perfectly well what he is doing. It may also be the case that the person who makes the present is not aware of the possibilities that open up once it is unwrapped: the paths of gifts received in childhood are inscrutable. Irish writer Dervla Murphy had a bicycle and an atlas dropped for her 10th birthday. A few days later, she pedaled up a hill near her house and decided that she would bike to India. In an almost inexplicable display of good sense, she first discarded the old Soviet Union—it was 1941—and then she made a decision that turned those gifts into a vital reason: not to say anything to her family, to keep it to herself. On January 14, 1963 he rode her bicycle to Dunkirk. The destination, New Delhi.
Full speed ahead (Captain Swing) is the book in which Murphy recounts that trip. Using a diary format, he recounted the stages in a simple style in which humor in the form of irony appears in each chapter. From the perspective offered by his Rozinante – that was the name of his bicycle – he outlines the landscapes and cultures he crosses, in such a way that the book becomes much more than a sporting adventure. After a quick passage through Europe—almost a warm-up—the stages through Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran provide the rhythm of the journey, which ends in New Delhi, where his body sensed the end of the adventure and gave him a few hours of fever and rest. With a critical eye, Murphy provided brilliant reflections on the human soul. Like that moment in which he meets a twenty-year-old American in a museum in Kabul and reflects on the need of some human beings to flee from their environments—not to be anywhere, but to leave somewhere—and his inability to commit to any value or ideal other than themselves.
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